Hi everyone...need help..

We have a group that is about to go against an Ancient Red Dragon. We have a Dwarven Life cleric, Elven Gloomstalker ranger, Halfling rogue, Half-Orc Paladin, Human Barbarian, and an Elven Bard. All of us are Level 11. Could use any advice. We are all fairly new to 5e.

Thanks!!

I could tell you to bring X potions and Y scrolls and give pointers on how to counter each move an Ancient Red Dragon has, but instead I'm going to suggest that you do a lot of your strategizing/info gathering in-game at the table. Seek out NPCs who have experience with dragons, or books/scrolls in libraries that tell tales of them. The more impactful a creature is on the world, the more information there is out there. From that information you can determine strengths and weaknesses and prepare for the battle accordingly.

D&D isn't just about fighting dragons, it's also about exploring the world and gathering information about stuff like how to effectively fight a dragon. I encourage you to dive into that part of the game.

Let's not get meta-gamey here but I'll just say explore all your options when it comes to whether or not you need to fight it, mind your environment for things that might give you a edge, don't feel restricted by the rules of combat and try to think creatively about how to approach it.

Remember Terminator: they didn't kill the robot by shooting it a lot, they killed it by knocking it into a pit of molten steel. Lateral thinking is your friend if the odds seem impossibly stacked against you.

But mostly, have fun, play your character, and even if you die, if you feel like it's how your character would've gone it can still be a great story. No guts no glory. 

Lastly, maybe your DM has something secret planned for this, maybe it won't go how you think it will. Sometimes when you've schemed and prepped as much as you think you can, you just gotta enjoy the ride and see what happens. 

Echoing scatterbraind I want to add that with really impressive opponents it's not uncommon that there are situational or campaign-specific possibilities to make it easier on yourself. It's not always going to be something as obvious as hearing rumours about a Dragon Slayer sword after you find out you have to go dragon hunting, but it might be. Don't miss a potential opportunity to do yourself a big favour and do some digging around. Once you do come face to face with your foe, look at the environment: maybe you can find a tactical advantage to exploit. If you can, try to create such advantages as well: choose your field of battle, don't fight on the enemy's terms if you can help it, set traps, etc. You don't want a fair fight. You want a fight that favours you as much as possible.   

Thanks for all the help, but a bit of backstory...we were transported directly into its lair..and at the the end of the session it reared it's head out of it's horde yelling "TRESPASSERS"...I got the feeling from the DM that there won't be much talking on this one..lol

What college is the bard?

Because if it is college of creation then just immediately break the ceiling with some kind of explosive or acid, or stack some debuff on it eg. blindness.

There doesn't have to be "talking". Look around and see if you can find a way to escape.  The DM doesn't necessarily expect you to go toe-to-toe with it.

Can you try and locate it's favorite piece of treasure and threaten to destroy it if he doesn't let you go? It's like in poker; you don't play the hand, you play the opponent. Only with a dragon. 

It could also be that the dragon is meant to kill you because you've ticked off the DM somehow so they've teleported you into a dragon lair to die. Sounds like something a DM at their wits' end would do. Reflect on your group's past behavior and ask yourself, is this what's going on?

A party of level 11s should not be able to defeat an ancient red dragon. Even an adult red dragon would be really hard to beat even if it was your only ecounter of the day.

Yelling "TRESSPASSERS" does not necessarily mean there will be no time for talk, it is quite possible that if you do a particular task for the dragon it will let you live, it is also possible that the DM will have set up an escape route for you (possibly after he has imprisoned you sell you as slaves or something.

My advise both in character and out of character would be an ancient red dragon is so powerful it would be suicide to go toe to toe with it so you need to either find a way to escape or appease it.

Ancient Red Dragons are meant to be end-game enemies. Like... they're intended to be challenging to a level 20 party with a CR of 24. That said... CR is famously imprecise. If you succeeded, you wouldn't be the first level 11 party to take down an Ancient Red Dragon in its lair... odds are not all of you will survive, but you've got a Cleric and an Ancient Red Dragon's Hoard to collect if you win, so odds are good that you'll be able to find enough diamonds to resurrect any dead party members. Remember it has Legendary Resistances, so for the first few rounds it's going to just ignore spell effects and drastically reduce damage, so you're gonna want to have your spellcasters hold back on their higher level spells until you manage to force it to spend its Legendary Resistances. Other than that... obviously, avoid trying to hit it with fire damage, and you're going to want to take advantage of the terrain. Don't stay grouped up... but also try not to split up so much that you can't get to each other in dire situations. Luckily you've got multiple characters who can heal allies when they drop below 0 hp, but honestly... this thing just has a mountain of health and big boosts to its most important saving throws, so be ready for a long haul.

That said, uh... I'd try to run first. If there's any means to get out of there, you ought to go for it. Even just getting into a tunnel too small for the dragon to enter fully gives you a big advantage.

Quote from Scottgilbert13 >>

Thanks for all the help, but a bit of backstory...we were transported directly into its lair..and at the the end of the session it reared it's head out of it's horde yelling "TRESPASSERS"...I got the feeling from the DM that there won't be much talking on this one..lol

 Welllll I suppose that invalidates my advice. Clearly your DM has a specific way he wants this to go. Good luck!

Quote from TransmorpherDDS >>

Ancient Red Dragons are meant to be end-game enemies. Like... they're intended to be challenging to a level 20 party with a CR of 24. That said... CR is famously imprecise. If you succeeded, you wouldn't be the first level 11 party to take down an Ancient Red Dragon in its lair

 Agreed but nearly every time a level 11 party has defeated an ancient red dragon it has not acted as a creature as intelligent as an ancient red dragon should, they will not use a legendary resistance on a punny damage spell and will be mindful when they do use them. If the fighting area is very large they will use their speen and flight to keep a distance from you. If it is a confined are a they will stand (or fly) in a corner so that no matter how you are arranged they can get the majority of you with their fire breath, and they will use their breath whenever they have it, opponents knocked unconcious will be attacked again to make sure they can notr be healed and so on.

This hard as we don't know how well your group are at team tactics. But use team tactics if you have to fight it. You can try to talk to it. Run away. Or ask for mercy. But as it is 62,000 xp CR and you as a team of 6 11th  team. A deadly encounter is of 28,000  xp.  But you are new. Mistakes happen on both sides.  If possible point out how deadly the encounter maybe. they will downgrade it. Maybe it is a pump fake, and the dragon wants you to do a fetch quest for it. 

The most obvious thing when fighting a dragon is the party needs to fan out and surround it and avoid clumping for the breath attack.  Make sure everyone at the table understands that.

Also, everyone needs a ranged option, or some way to get flying, because otherwise the dragon will fly up and you will be useless.  

Other than that just hit it with everything you got and good luck!  If you guys are really only lvl 11 you will more than likely die, just FYI. 

Critical role Campaign 2 episode 75. Has the palyers in a similar situation to yours.

Thanks for all the advice..will see what happens Friday night!

Quote from Scottgilbert13 >>

Thanks for all the advice..will see what happens Friday night!

Let us know!

Hiring an NPC wizard or sorcerer might help give you additional tactically options.

Knowing that I resurrected an old thread just to leap on my own soapbox, here's what I found, as per the core rules.

An Ancient Red Dragon has a CR 24 (62,000) exp.  The CR Threshold Chart on page 82 of the DMG is designed for a party of between 3-5 characters.  By their numbers, only a party of 5 characters at level 20 has any hope of defeating an Ancient Red, and the encounter would be of "deadly" difficulty.  Apart from this, you'd need more characters.

With a party of 6 up against an Ancient Red, two things happen.  One, the CR Rating of the Ancient Red is cut in half, because we're advised to use a modifier of one less when our party number is 6 or more people, and in the case of 1 monster, the multiplier would be .5, giving us 31,000 XP to compare Encounter XP Threshold's against.  Now, suddenly, you have an encounter that at least requires 5 level 13's, and 1 level 14, in order to consider it deadly and not utterly lethal.

If you are considering building a campaign that culminates in taking on an Ancient Red, but you'd want to start it off at level 1, then you'd need to prepare at least 740,000 XP worth of encounters for that party of 6, but if you only have 5, then you had better load up your campaign with enough extra encounters to total 1,775,000 XP.  In other words, start at the bare minimum, but build in enough XP that the smaller party has a fighting chance.  And if you have a party of 4 or less?  Good luck.  If it's played correctly, apparently, the Ancient Red has no problem wiping you out.

These numbers should have no overall bearing on how you encounter your Ancient Red in your campaigns.  Every DM is different, and in my opinion, 5 level 20's should be more than a match for a paltry Ancient Red, but I did find it interesting that this is how the numbers played out.  I wonder how much difficulty that party of 6 would have, but at least there's room for them to grow.  Happy gaming, everyone!